There is hardly anything that could be more painful or is there anything that has the potential to rip apart a marriage any deeper and surer than infidelity. It does grievous damage to the sanctity of a marital partnership.

But the question is: Can God bring back from the the dead a marriage that has been ripped apart by unfaithfulness?

Think of it this way:

“Who better to resurrect an ash heap of a marriage than the creator of marriage Himself?” (Marla Kloenckner)

And who better to resurrect a marriage, than a God who knows can identify the heartache and betrayal and yet eventual reconciliation, through Jesus Christ, to His unfaithful bride —the church?

“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

To help you in this journey, we urge you to prayerfully read the articles and web sites we have posted on this web site on infidelity and also other articles and resources we make available, which our Wonderful Counselor, the Holy Spirit, will guide you through.

Also, we have provided a link to an article posted below on the web site of psychologist David Clarke, that might also help you as a starting point. We pray it ministers to your heart and that the Lord infuses hope into your spirit.

Please click onto the article below:

• BRING YOUR MARRIAGE BACK FROM THE DEAD

• Watch out for your own stuff. Most of us have beliefs, feelings, and experiences that prejudice us when we deal with other peoples’ relationships-that’s what I mean by “stuff.” WARNING: Never will your own marriage be more vulnerable than when you are trying to assist a couple in their recovery from infidelity. You will find yourself working through the same issues with your own spouse.

• The survival of your friend’s marital relationship is not dependent upon you. In most cases, the couple you are working with choose to marry each other before you were in the picture. You didn’t bring them together, and you can’t keep them together. You must set the couple free to pursue their own course. At times you will want to take control of their recovery process, but you must refrain for their sake.

• They must never be able to draw you into their relationship (a process technically called triangulation). If that happens each will individually attempt to align you with his or her side. Remember, the infidelity was an inappropriate triangulation, and so is an attempt to overly involve yourself.

• Keep the two of them talking to each other. Don’t maintain secrets that one party shares with you hoping to align you with his or her side. Remember, infidelity was the worst secret that could afflict a marriage, and more secrecy doesn’t help. At times your neutrality may appear brutal, especially since you’re probably closer to one party than the other (e.g., your high school friend who got married). You will feel the urge to intervene and provide protection, but you need to resist it.

• If you are feeling more exhausted in the struggle than they are, you are inappropriately involved. That is not to say that some of your time with them won’t be exhausting, but you need to gauge your degree of involvement. You shouldn’t work at it harder than they do.

• Keep in mind that the material in this book, “Torn Asunder”, is the practical “how to,” to assist in the forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration of the marriage. It should never be viewed as a replacement for what God can do. As you seek to support your friends or counselees, be prayerful and stay close to God’s Word. Forgiveness and reconciliation are always miracles. Only God can heal!

The above article comes from the excellent book, TORN ASUNDER —Recovery from Extramarital Affairs -By Dave Carder, Moody Publishers, www.moodypublishers.com. This book is very comprehensive and is a great practical guide for dealing with extramarital affairs. It’s very comprehensive because it carefully sorts out the different kinds of affairs and deals with each kind-giving very practical and insightful information. It doesn’t lump all infidelity together “giving over-simplistic spiritual answers.” It’s practical because “it deals with daily, gut-level issues both partners face.” We highly recommend getting this book!

There are a couple of parts that especially stand out and set it apart from other resources. One in particular which is EXCELLENT is titled: “When Your Spouse Doesn’t Want You Back: The 90-Day Experiment.” We wish we could have put this portion of the book on our web site but it’s too long to be able to honor the author’s copyright privilege and it really can’t be shortened to do it justice. You really need to get the book to have this as well as the other helpful information.

(If you’re dealing with this problem and you can’t get this book in your country then please contact the publisher at the above web site and see if there’s something that can be arranged.)

They also have a section in it which includes a questionnaire that addresses: “Are You at Risk for an Affair?” It’s an excellent tool to identify personal growth areas for you and your spouse to discuss and develop and is designed to help evaluate personal history and lifestyle which parallels with those who have been involved in adultery. We were surprised by some of the questions and what can set people up to have an affair. It might help you too. This book is filled with many other great insights also!

But it can also be a good thing to hear it from their parents rather than from someone else. These kinds of things have a way of shooting out of the darkness into the light. Your adult children may feel betrayed if they were never told from their parents and had to hear about it elsewhere.

This is something we’d like to hear from you as far as what you think. Have you been in this place yourself or do you know of someone who has? Tell us briefly what happened and whether you think it’s a good idea to tell your adult children about the affair. It could possibly help someone else who is faced with this dilemma.

Before doing so, we’d like you to read an article that appears on the web site for the Beyond Affairs Network (which is directed by Anne and Brian Bercht). It might give you a few additional insights. This web site can be found at www.beyondaffairs.com.

To read this particular article we will provide a link for you below (and then arrow back afterwards to leave comment, if you desire to do so).

To read the article:

PLEASE CLICK HERE

Whatever the reason, failing to promise monogamy makes your partner wonder whether the two of you are on the same page about the future of your marriage. So, don’t hold back. If you can honestly say that you’re committed to being monogamous, let your partner know in no uncertain terms that that is your plan.

SHARE DETAILS: If your spouse is the sort of person who requires lots of information in order to feel better about the affair, you should be honest. I know this is very difficult and you may be tempted to withhold information, thinking that you’re protecting your spouse. But many in your spouse’s shoes have said that the worst part of the infidelity were the lies and deception that followed the disclosure. It’s time for you to come clean and clear the air. As tough as that might be, it’s a lot easier than lying, covering up, and being discovered again. That corrodes trust tremendously. So share, even if it hurts.

Sometimes you’ll question whether sharing information is a good idea because your spouse reacts so badly to the things you’ve said. But if your spouse determines that the road to recovery is paved with brutal honesty, that’s the path you need to take no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel. There will be times when the two of you will feel close as a result of this new honesty and you’ll begin to feel that your truthfulness has really paid off. Then, just when you though you were out of the woods and the questions would cease, a whole new slew of questions get thrown your way. You feel as if you’re getting the third degree.

Remember, healing is a process, not a quick fix. Just because your spouse was fine on Monday doesn’t mean s/he will be fine on Thursday. It also doesn’t mean that sharing information isn’t working. Some people think, “I told him/her what happened. If that was so useful, why is s/he still having a problem and needing to talk about it constantly? That’s just the way improvement happens … in waves. You need to continue to be forthcoming, from now until forever.

OFFER REASSURANCES: Although you may have decided to turn over a new leaf, your spouse is still reacting to what happened. This is completely normal, for now, you owe it to your partner and to yourself to bend over backward to prove your trustworthiness.

You might be thinking to yourself, “I decided to stop the affair and be trustworthy, I don’t know why s/he just doesn’t trust me now.” Your spouse is feeling very insecure right now and needs all the help you give him/her to get back on stable ground. You need to extend yourself—even if you don’t think you should have to—to help your spouse feel more secure. Along these lines, do what your spouse asks. Here are some things s/he might ask of you:

• Call from work often.
• Limit out-of-town travel temporarily.
• Offer complete travel itineraries and phone numbers.
• Carry a pager.
• Talk about your day in detail.
• Spend more time together.
• Be willing to answer any and all questions about the OP and about your whereabouts.

Remember, once your spouse feels more trust in you and in your marriage, many of these requests will stop.

EXPECT UPS AND DOWNS: I really want to emphasize this point. The road to recovery is a zigzag, not a straight line. At first, the bad days will definitely outnumber the good ones. In fact, there may not be any good days to speak of. But slowly, as you begin to talk and make sense of what happened, you will have your positive moments. Moments will turn into days. Then, you will actually have a stretch of a few good days at a time. Just when you start to get optimistic something will happen that will remind your spouse about the affair and bring back those unpleasant feelings.

This rockiness and instability will occur for a very long time. You need to expect that. It doesn’t mean that this problem is insurmountable, it just means that this problem is on its way to being resolved. It happens slowly, much too slowly for you. And what should you do in the meantime?

BE PATIENT: Even though you might feel a great deal of remorse about what happened, there will be times when you have a hard time understanding why your spouse seems intent on hanging on to the affair. From your standpoint, the whole thing is over and you want to just move on. However, if you convey this emotion to your spouse, s/he will feel that you’re not empathetic, that you have no idea what s/he has been going through, and that will set both of you back considerably.

I realize that your need to move on has little to do with your insensitivity. In fact, one of the primary reasons you want to put the past in the past is because you don’t want to see the hurt on your partner’s face any longer. But be that as it may, you have to move at your spouse’s pace. You won’t be able to speed things along with your anger.

Continue to answer questions and be reassuring. If your spouse still wants to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing, continue offering information. It won’t last forever, even though it seems that way right now. This is a transitional period. There has been major breach of trust and it takes time to heal. Be patient, be loving, be responsive, and you will get through this.

Marriage Missions’ Editors Note: We want to conclude this article by giving you a few additional thoughts that may help in this battle of rebuilding trust:

• Advice that Dr Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil Show, “You’re Not the Person I Married” aired 12/5/02) gave a husband who had an adulterous affair:

“I’m gong to tell you, one guy to another, if you really want this marriage to work, you gotta get real with her, and you’ve got to get real with yourself, because you’re kind of trying to gloss this over a little bit and hope that it goes away, but let me tell you, my wife told me something a long time ago that I’ve never forgotten. She said, ‘Women have a real long memory.’ And you have, brick by brick by brick, constructed a wall between the two of you with your past behavior. And I’ll tell you what it takes, and if you hear not another word I say today, hear this, OK?

“Number one, people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. They hide nothing, mentally, emotionally, physically, behaviorally. They’re an absolute open book. Just whatever you want to know about me, I’m here. I’m just completely, totally open. And unless and until you do that—and it’s not just a matter of ‘if he’s over eating pizza when he says he’s eating pizza’—it’s a matter of everything being honest and truthful with you. It starts with being totally open and totally transparent.

“And the second thing—and this may be the most important thing of all—She will never, ever, ever get beyond what has happened unless and until she knows you have heard her. Until she knows that you get the gravity of what you have done and are doing, she will never, ever, ever be anything but the picture of pain you’re looking at right now.”

• Another thought to consider:

“It’s difficult to forgive 10 gallons worth of hurt when your spouse is only asking for a pint of forgiveness” (Dr. Roger Barrier — Casas Adobes Baptist Church).

The point is, there’s still a lot more emotional work that needs to be done before the person who’s hurting truly feels you understand the enormity of what’s been inflicted upon them. But when they feel you understand—that you really, truly get it, and are absolutely sorry, then REAL healing and hope for a brighter future comes into the relationship.

Scripture verses to consider:

• He who conceals his sins does not prosper but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy (Proverbs 28:13).
• Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it is in your power to act. (Proverbs 3:27)
• Jesus said, “If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” (Matthew 5:41).
• An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips (Proverbs 24:26).
• Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. (Phil. 2:3).

• The following advice comes from the excellent book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages” by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott (published by Zondervan Publishing). This is advice for spouses whose marriages have been jolted by an extra-marital affair. The first is:

To the spouse who had the affair:
• First and foremost, sever all contact with the third party immediately.

• Clear boundaries need to be established if you’re wanting to rebuild the trust you have broken with your partner.

• You must be willing to answer any questions from your spouse. This isn’t because your partner needs to know all the details of what went on, but they do need to know they have your willingness to give them the details.

• Openness to questioning shows respect, honor, and equality. It shows that you can be trusted in the future.

To the spouse who has remained faithful:
• You should only ask questions if you really want the truth. Some things may be better left alone if you can do it.

• You must also steer clear of the temptation down the road to use any information you ask for as a way to beat up your partner for other problems.

• Realize that it may take years to absorb the emotional impact of what has happened. Adultery isn’t something you can get over quickly. It’s important to give yourself plenty of recovery time.”

• Also, below are several links to articles posted on various web sites that you might find helpful as you work to rebuild trust. Please click onto the links provided below to read:

of the principles presented are very solid. She teaches you how to identify specific marriage-saving goals, move beyond ineffective, hurtful ways of interacting, and become an expert on “doing what works.”

Inspirational anecdotes and in-depth case studies show how couples have used these techniques to save their marriages, and how you can use these same techniques to rescue yours. The author also offers solution-oriented strategies for readers to cope with infidelity, and midlife crises. And if you think you partner already has a foot out the door, this proven program is a recipe for change, even if only you participate.

(NOTE: While we agree with about 95% of what this book presents, we do disagree with some of Michelle’s advice to couples who face an Internet Pornography problem. But, even so, we recommend this book to couples because the rest of the advice is very helpful.)

We arrived at my parents’ home late in the evening. After a lot of hugs and a few tears, we went into their family room. After the usual small talk, my Dad spoke the unspoken. “What’s your plan?”

My husband, Ron, leaned forward and said, “Plan? Plan for what?”

“You two are going to have to figure out why your marriage fell apart, how to fix it, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Ron replied, “Well, I don’t know if we need to do all that. I don’t even want to talk about what she did. It’s too painful. Nancy’s back home now — we’ll just move on from here.”

Dad continued, “It doesn’t work that way. If you rebuild a house on a cracked foundation, it might be all right for a while; might even feel solid and stable. But when the storms come, the crack will split the house. And the Bible tells us that a house divided won’t stand. If you don’t repair the foundation of your marriage, it won’t survive. The memory of Nancy’s betrayal and the guilt you’ll force her to carry will be unbearable—for both of you. I don’t think you’ll be able to move on until you, Ron, make one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make.”

“What decision is that?”

“Has Nancy told you she’s sorry for what she’s done?”

“Yes, she has apologized to me several times.”

“Did she ask you to forgive her?”

“No, not in those exact words.”

Dad turned to me and continued, “When you tell someone you’re sorry, it’s very different from asking for their forgiveness. Your ’sorry-ness’ is your decision. But when you ask someone to forgive you, that’s their decision. It’s difficult because it gives all the power to the other person.”

“That’s a scary thought,” I said, without meaning to say it aloud.

Then he spoke to Ron, who looked confused and apprehensive. “When you forgive someone, you make a choice to banish the offense from your mind and your heart. Jesus said that after He forgives us, our sins are as far away as the East is from the West. In other words, they are pardoned. Not because we’re not guilty, but because we are. Our pardon is undeserved — it’s a gift to us from God.”

He continued, “If you decide to forgive Nancy, you can never use her sin against her. God will give you the strength to start a new life together. If you choose not to forgive, if you want to hold on to the pain, or punish her, and keep her wound open, that will be your choice. But if you choose that, I don’t think you’ll stay married. You have biblical grounds to divorce her, but you don’t have to. It is your decision. I want you both to pray about what I’ve said, and make your decision. We will continue this conversation in the morning.”

After a long and restless night, we met again. The three of them were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for me. I felt like the adulterous woman wearing the Scarlet Letter on the way to her hanging. If Ron would not forgive me, the noose would tighten around my neck and the floor would seem to drop away. I was completely at his mercy.

I avoided eye contact and sat directly across from Ron. I asked my dad, “How do we do this? I want to ask Ron to forgive me, but what do I say?”

“If you’ve decided to ask Ron’s forgiveness, tell him what you want to be forgiven for, and then simply ask him the question. Ron will decide whether to forgive you or not. You ask; he answers. It’s the simplest thing you two will ever do — and the hardest.”

Ron had his head down so I couldn’t read his eyes. I thought, “What if I ask Ron for mercy and he denies me? What am I going to do if he starts to lecture me or list off all my sins?”

I looked over at my sweet, wounded husband and saw the wide-eyed face of a frightened twelve-year-old boy. I spoke quickly so that I wouldn’t lose the safety of the moment. “Ron, I’ve betrayed you mentally, spiritually, and physically. I’ve lied to you and deceived you. I have no defense, no excuses. I’ve sinned against God and against you. Can you — will you please forgive me?”

He leaned forward, never letting go of my eyes. The little boy was gone as my strong and confidant husband took my hands in his and said, “Nancy, we’ve both done and said terrible things to each other. Our marriage was a mess — and a lot of it was my fault. But I take a stand today to change all that. You have betrayed me, but I choose to forgive you.”

We both began to cry and our tears mixed with divine love that flowed through the room. Our hearts were knit together—as one. We began again with a new, solid marriage foundation.

After we made the decision to reconcile and reform our marriage, we immediately sought advice from many different sources. We went to a Christian marriage counselor, who helped us learn to communicate more effectively. We also read several books about “starting over” and attended some marriage retreats and workshops.

One of the most important things we did was join a wonderful church and faithfully attend worship services and adult Sunday school classes. We received solid biblical teaching from a godly pastor, and we acted on his instruction.

The transformation was a slow process. We’d developed many destructive habits, and some of them took years to die. We decided to stay together and act lovingly toward each other, and eventually our feelings caught up with our actions. We learned that married love is not a feeling. It is a decision — and we decided to love each other.

Since our reconciliation in 1980, we’ve completely rebuilt our marriage. We had to destroy the old foundation—selfishness—and rebuild upon the rock—Jesus. We used a perfect blueprint—the Bible—and now our home stands firm.

We also created a new landscape for our marriage, planting hedges around it for protection. What are hedges? Hedges are boundaries. In Mark 12:1 Jesus said, “A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it.” First, the man planted a vineyard. Think of your marriage as a vineyard. You “planted” it the day you said, I do.

Next, the man in the parable placed a hedge around his vineyard. Why? Several reasons: to protect it from intrusion by animals and thieves; to keep his vines inside his vineyard; and to separate his territory from his neighbor’s.

A hedge makes the statement, “Private Property, No Trespassing.” The symbolic hedges around our marriages serve the same purposes. As married couples, our goal, as co-owners of our vineyard, is to keep the good things in —and the bad things out.

I also refuse to entertain the stray thoughts anymore. Instead, I replaced them with images of the new life that Ron and I were building. I also discovered that encouraging others with our story of restoration gave a purpose to our pain. This summer, we will celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary and I’m thrilled to tell you that our marriage is strong, loving, and healed.

Author Nancy Anderson and her husband, Ron, conduct couples’ retreats and marriage seminars to help others to predict, prevent or pardon infidelity. You can read more from Nancy at www.NancyCAnderson.

Adapted from the book, Avoiding The Greener Grass Syndrome, published by Kregel Publications. As some reviewers have said —which we agree, “This is wisdom born of tragic but genuine experience. Because Nancy Anderson nearly ruined her marriage due to infidelity, she truly knows the misery that an affair can cause. Her honesty, vulnerability, and repentance provide marital lessons guaranteed to revitalize and strengthen couples who are susceptible to the lure of an affair. She does a terrific job telling her compelling U-turn story of rebellion, repentance, and restoration. In the second part of the book, she gives helpful suggestions and funny examples that demonstrate how to create a healthy and satisfying marriage. She has a delightful way of teaching without preaching.” This really is a very good book for every Christian couple to read! We highly recommend it.

Most betrayed spouses intuitively understand the danger and demand that all contact with a lover end for life. Permanent separation not only helps prevent a renewal of the affair, but it is also a crucial gesture of consideration to the betrayed spouse.

In spite of career sacrifices, friendships, and issues relating to children’s schooling, I recommend with all seriousness that there be a sudden and complete end to an affair. And I recommend extreme measures to ensure total separation for life from a former lover.

Several years ago, I owned and operated ten chemical dependency treatment clinics. At first, we used several different treatment strategies. For some, we tried to encourage moderation, and for others we tried to achieve total abstinence. It wasn’t long before all the counselors agreed that total abstinence was the only way to save drug or alcohol addicts from their self-destructive behavior.

Unless they completely abandoned the object of their addiction, the addiction usually returned. For these people, moderation was impossible. The conviction that their drug of choice was off-limits to them for life, helped end their cycle of addiction-treatment-addiction.

My strategy for ending an affair with total separation from the lover developed after my experience treating addicts. And, over the years, I’ve found my total-separation strategy to be very effective in ending affairs in a way that makes marital recovery possible. Without total separation, marital recovery is almost impossible.

An affair is a very powerful addiction. The craving to be with the lover can be so intense that objective reality doesn’t have much of a chance. The fact that a spouse and children may be permanently injured by this cruel indulgence doesn’t seem to matter. All that matters is spending more time with the lover. That makes it an addiction.

Even the one-night stand may be an addiction. It may not be an addiction to a particular lover, but it may still be an addiction—to one-night stands. In affairs that have low emotional attachment, the addiction is often to the act of having sex itself, rather than to a particular lover.

The addiction to one-night stands can also grow from a need to be continually assured of one’s attractiveness. People who indulge in such practices want to feel that they can have anyone they want, even that person over there sitting at the bar. These people who need constant reassurance of their attractiveness must learn some other way to gain that assurance—a way that does not destroy their marriage.

The analogy between chemical addiction and an affair is striking. In both cases, the first step toward recovery is admitting that the addiction is self-destructive and harmful to those whom the addict cares for most—his or her family.

After recognizing the need to overcome the addiction, the next step is to suffer through the symptoms of withdrawal. Addicts are often admitted to a hospital or treatment program during the first few weeks of withdrawal to ensure total separation from the addicting substance.

The way to overcome an addiction is tried and proven—abstain from the object of addiction. Alcoholics, for example, must completely avoid contact with any alcoholic beverage to gain control over their addictive behavior. They must avoid places where alcohol is likely to be found, such as bars and parties. They must even avoid friends who drink occasionally in their presence. They must surround themselves with an alcohol-free environment. In the same way, when a wayward spouse separates from the lover, extraordinary precautions must be taken to avoid all contact with the lover—for life.

Of course, my advice is not easy to implement. Many people who have had an affair try but fail to make a drastic and decisive break with their lover.

The above article is adapted from the book, Surviving an Affair, by Dr. Willard F. Harley and Dr. Jennifer Harley Chalmers, published by Fleming H. Revel. This book is a guide to understanding and surviving every aspect of infidelity—from the beginning of an affair through the restoration of the marriage.

The authors Drs. Harley and Chalmers describe why affairs begin and end, how to end an affair, how to restore the marriage after the affair, how to manage resentment, and how to rebuild trust. It also guides you step-by-step from the devastating blow of infidelity to a loving and trusting marriage.

There is also an additional article written by Dr Harley, which is featured on the web site for the Family Dynamics Institute, that you might find helpful. You can read it by clicking onto the link provided below:

• THE ADDICTIVE POWER OF AN AFFAIR

Q: What is the single most important thing you want people to know about infidelity?
Dr. G: Boundaries. That it’s possible to love somebody else, to be attracted to somebody else, even if you have a good marriage. In this collegial world where we work together, you have to conduct yourself by being aware of appropriate boundaries, by not creating opportunities, particularly at a time when you might be vulnerable.

That means that if you travel together, you never invite someone for a drink in the room; if you just had a fight with your spouse, you don’t discuss it with a person who could be a potential partner. You can have a friendship, but you have to be careful who you share your deepest feelings with. Although women share their deep feelings with lots of people, particularly other women, men are usually most comfortable sharing their feelings in a love relationship. As a result, when a relationship becomes intimate and emotional, men tend to sexualize it.

Q: Is compartmentalizing characteristic of people who get into affairs?
Dr. G: It’s much more characteristic of men. Most women believe that if you love your partner, you wouldn’t even be in an affair; therefore, if someone has an affair, it means that they didn’t love their partner and they love the person that they had the affair with. But my research has shown that there are many men who do love their partners, who enjoy good sex at home, who nevertheless never turn down an opportunity for extramarital sex. In fact, 56% of the men I sampled who had extramarital intercourse said that their marriages were happy, versus 34% of the women. That’s how I got into this.

Q: Because?
Dr. G: Being a woman, I believed that if a man had an affair, it meant that he had a terrible marriage, and that he probably wasn’t getting it at home-the old keep-your-husband-happy-so-he-won’t-stray idea. That puts too much of a burden on the woman. I found that she could be everything wonderful, and he might still stray, if that’s in his value system, his family background, or his psycho dynamic structure.

I was in graduate school when I heard that a man I knew, married for over 40 years, had recently died and his wife was so bereaved because they’d had the most wonderful marriage. He had been her lover, her friend, her support system. She missed him immensely. I thought that was a beautiful story. When I told my husband about it, he got a funny look that made me ask, “What do you know?” He proceeded to tell me that one night when he took the kids out for dinner to an out of the way restaurant, owned by one of his clients—that very man walked in with a young, blonde woman. When he saw my husband, his face got red, & he walked out.

Q: How did that influence you?
Dr. G: I wondered what that meant. Did he fool his wife all those years and really not love her? How is it possible to be married for over 40 years and think you have a good marriage? It occurred to me that an affair could mean something different than I believe. Another belief that you only have so much energy for something. By this belief, if your partner is getting sex outside, you’d know it, because your partner wouldn’t be wanting sex at home.

However, some people are even more passionate at home when they are having extramarital sex. I was stunned to hear a man tell me that when he left his affair partner and came home he found himself desiring his wife more than he had in a long time, because he was so sexually aroused by his affair.

Q: What research have you done on infidelity?
Dr. G: My first research study was actually based on a sex questionnaire in Psychology Today, in the 70’s. I analyzed the data looking at the relationship of extramarital sex, length of marriage, and gender difference on marital satisfaction and romanticism. I found enormous gender differences: that men in long term marriages who had affairs had very high marital satisfaction—and that women in long-term marriages having affairs had the lowest marital satisfaction of all. Explaining these gender differences was the basis of my dissertation. I theorized that the men were having sexual affairs and the women emotional affairs.

Q: Are affairs about sex?
Dr. G: Sometimes infidelity is just about sex. That’s often more true for men. In my research, 44% of men who said they had extramarital sex said they had slight or no emotional involvement; only 11% of women said that. Oral sex is certainly about sex. Some spouses are more upset if the partner had oral sex with an affaire than if they had intercourse; it just seems so much more intimate.

Q: What is the infidelity?
Dr. G: The infidelity is that you took something that was supposed to be mine, which is sexual or emotional intimacy, and you gave it to somebody else. I thought that we had a special relationship, and now you have contaminated it; it doesn’t feel special any more, because you shared something that was very precious to us with someone else.

There are gender differences though. Men feel more betrayed by their wives having sex with someone else; women feel more betrayed by their husbands being emotionally involved with someone else. What really tears men apart is to visualize their partner being sexual with somebody else. Women certainly don’t want their husbands having sex with somebody else, but if it’s an impersonal one-night fling, they may be able to deal with that better than if their husband was involved in a long-term relationship sharing all kinds of loving ways with somebody else.

Q: Why are affairs so deeply wounding?
Dr. G: Because you have certain assumptions about your marriage—that I chose someone, and the other person chose me; we have the same values; we’ve both decided to have an exclusive relationship, even though we may have some problems. We love each other and therefore I’m safe. When you find out your partner has been unfaithful, then everything you believe is totally shattered. And you have to rebuild the world. The fact that you weren’t expecting it—that it wasn’t part of your assumption about how a relationship operates, causes traumatic reactions. The wounding results because—and I’ve heard this so many times—I finally thought I met somebody I could trust.

Q: It violates that hope or expectation that you can be who you really are with another person?
Dr. G: Yes. Affairs really aren’t about sex; they’re about betrayal. Imagine if you were married to somebody very patriotic and then found out your partner is a Russian spy. Someone having a long-term affair is leading a double life. Then you find out all that was going on in your partner’s life that you knew nothing about: Gifts that were exchanged, poems and letters that were written, trips you thought were taken for a specific reason were actually taken to meet the affair partner.

To find out about all the intrigue and deception that occurred while you were operating under a different assumption is totally shattering and disorienting. That’s why people then have to get out their calendars and go back over the dates to put all the missing pieces together: when you were going to the drugstore that night and you said your car broke down and you didn’t come home for 3 hours, what was really happening?

Q: This is necessary?
Dr. G: In order to heal. Because any time somebody suffers from a trauma, part of the recovery is telling the story. The tornado victim will go over and over the story—”when the storm came I was in my room” —trying to understand what happened, and how it happened. Didn’t we see the black clouds? How come we didn’t know?”

Q: And so they repeat the story until it no longer creates an unmanageable level of arousal.
Dr. G: Yes. In fact, sometimes people are more devastated if everything was wonderful before they found out. When a betrayed spouse who suspected something says, “I don’t know if I can ever trust my partner again,” it’s reassuring is to tell them that they can trust their own instincts the next time they have those storm warnings. When things feel okay, they can trust that things are okay. But if somebody thought everything was wonderful, how would they ever know if it happened again? It’s frightening.

Q: What is the sine qua non of an affair?
Dr. G: 3 elements determine whether a relationship is an affair. One is secrecy. Suppose two people meet every morning at 7 A.M. for coffee before work, and they never tell their partners. Even though it might be in a public place, their partner isn’t going to be happy about it. It’s going to feel like a betrayal, a terrible deception.

Emotional intimacy is the second element. When someone starts confiding things to another person that they’re reluctant to confide to their partner and the emotional intimacy is greater in the friendship than in the marriage, that’s very threatening. One common pathway to affairs occurs when somebody starts confiding negative things about their marriage to a person of the opposite sex. What they’re doing is signaling: “I’m vulnerable; I may even be available.”

The third element is sexual chemistry. That can occur even if two people don’t touch. If one says, “I’m really attracted to you,” or “I had a dream about you last night, but, of course, I’m married, so we won’t do anything about that,” that tremendously increases the sexual tension by creating forbidden fruit in the relationship.

Q: Do affairs ever serve a positive function—not to excuse any of the damage they do?
Dr. G: Affairs are often a chance for people to try out new behaviors, to dress in a different costume, to stretch and grow and assume a different role. In a long-term relationship, we often get frozen in our roles. When young couples begin at a certain level of success and go on to achieve all kinds of things, the new person sees them as they’ve become, while the old person sees them as they were.

The unfortunate thing is that the way a person is different in the affair would, if incorporated into the marriage, probably make their spouse ecstatic. But they believe they’re stuck; they don’t know how to create that opportunity for change within the marriage. A woman who was sexually inhibited in marriage—perhaps she married young and had no prior partners—may find her sexuality in an affair, but her husband would probably be delighted to encounter that new self.

Q: How do you handle this?
Dr. G: After an affair, I don’t ask the question you’d expect. The spouse always wants to know about “him or her”. “What did you see in her that you didn’t see in me?” I always ask about “you”: “What did you like about yourself in that other relationship?” How were you different? And, of the way that you were in that other relationship, what would you like to bring back so that you can be the person you want to be in your primary relationship? How can we foster that part of you in this relationship?

Q: Do people push their partners into affairs?
Dr. G: No. People can create a pattern in the marriage that isn’t enhancing, and the partner, instead of dealing with the dissatisfaction and trying to work on the relationship, escapes it and goes someplace else.

Q: That is the wrong way to solve the problem?
Dr. G: Yes. There are some gender differences in the ways partners handle problems, although everything we say about men can be true for some women, and everything we say about women can be true for some men. Generally when a woman is unhappy, she lets her partner know. She feels better afterwards because she’s gotten it off her chest. It doesn’t interfere with her love. She’s trying to improve the relationship: “If I tell him what makes me unhappy, then he’ll know how to please me; I am giving him a gift by telling him.”

Unfortunately, many men don’t see it as a gift. They feel criticized and put down. Instead of thinking, “she feels lonely; I’ll move toward her and make her feel secure,” they think, “What’s wrong with her? Didn’t I just do that?” They pull away. If they come in contact with somebody else who says to them, “oh, you’re wonderful,” then they move toward that person. They aren’t engaged enough in the marriage to work things out. The partner keeps trying, and becomes more unpleasant because he’s not responding.

Q: She becomes the pursuer, he the distancer.
Dr. G: When she withdraws, the marriage is much further down the road to dissolution, because she’s given up. Her husband, unfortunately, thinks things are so much better because she’s no longer complaining. He doesn’t recognize that she has detached and become emotionally available for an affair. The husband first notices it when she becomes disinterested in sex—or after she’s left! Then he’ll do anything to keep her. The tragedy is that it’s often too little too late.

Q: The opportunities for affairs have changed radically in the past 20 years. Men and women are together all the time in the workplace, and workplaces are sexy places. You dress up, you’re trying your best, there’s lots of energy in the air.
Dr. G: And you’re not cleaning up vomit or the hot water heater that just flooded the basement. And it’s not at the end of the day, when you’re exhausted. Also, you’re working together on something that has excitement and meaning. One of the major shifts is that more married women are having affairs than in the past. There are several reasons. Today’s woman has usually had more experience with premarital sex, so she’s not as inhibited about getting involved sexually with another man. She has more financial independence, so she’s not taking as great a risk. And she’s working with men on a more equal level, so the men are very attractive to her.

Q: What do people seek in an affair partner?
Dr. G: Either we choose somebody very different from our partner, or we choose somebody like our partner used to be, a younger version. A woman married to a really sweet guy who helps with the dishes, who’s very nurturing and very secure, may at some point see him as boring and get interested in the high-achieving, high-energy man who may even be a bit chauvinistic. But if she’s married to the man with the power and the status, then she’s interested in the guy who’s sensitive and touchy-feely, who may not be as ambitious.

Q: Is this just the nature of attraction?
Dr. G: It has to do with the fact that people really want it all. We have different parts of ourselves. The other flip-flop in choice of affair partner reflects the fact that the marriage often represents a healing of our family wounds. Somebody who lacked a secure attachment figure in their family of origin chooses a mate who provides security and stability.

It’s a healthy, resilient part of ourselves that seeks that balancing. But after we’ve mastered that, we often want to go back and find somebody like that difficult parent and make that person love us. There’s a correlation between the nature of the attachment figure and the affair partner; the person is trying to master incomplete business from childhood. As a result, some people will choose an affair partner who’s difficult, temperamental, or unpredictable.

Q: The challenge becomes, how, with busy lives, do people satisfy all of their needs within the marriage?
Dr. G: It’s a false belief that if I’m incomplete, I have to be completed by another person. You have to do it through your own life, your own work, for your own pleasure, through individual growth. The more fulfilled you are, in terms of things that you do separately that please you, the more individuated and more whole you are—and the more intimate you can be. Then you’re not expecting the other person to make you happy. You’re expecting the other person to share happiness with you, to join you in your happiness.

Q: What other changes do you see in affairs these days?
Dr. G: Cyber affairs are new. For some people the computer itself is very addictive. They get very caught up in it. It’s hiding out, escaping. And an affair is an escape—from the realities of everyday life. These two escapes are now paired. The other danger online is that people can disguise who they are. Think of the roles you can take on if you hide behind a computer screen. More so than in workplace affairs, you can project anything onto the other person.

At the computer, with a screen in front of you; you can act out any fantasy you want. You can make this other person become anybody you want them to be. There’s a loosening up, because you’re not face to face with the person; the relationship begins in anonymity. Sometimes people send nude pictures back and forth.

Q: This attracts only a certain kind of person, doesn’t it?
Dr. G: We don’t know yet. Among the e-mail questions that I get are always a number from people who are concerned because their partner is having an online relationship with somebody. Or their partner had an affair with somebody they met online. It’s very prevalent, and it’s very dangerous. If you’re talking to somebody on the computer,and you begin to talk about your sexual fantasies,and you’re not talking to your partner about your sexual fantasies, which relationship now has more sexual chemistry? Which relationship has more emotional intimacy? Then your partner walks in the room and you switch screens. Now you’ve got a wall of secrecy.

It has all the components of an affair. And it’s very easy. Technology has impacted affairs in another way, too. Many people have discovered their partner’s affair by getting the cellular phone bill, or by getting in the car and pushing redial on the car phone, or by taking their partner’s beeper and seeing who’s been calling. We’re leaving a whole new electronic trail.

Q: How many affairs survive as enduring relationships?
Dr. G: Only 10% of people who leave their relationship for affairs end up with the affair partner. Once you can be with the person every day, and deal with all the little irritations in a relationship that makes it less romantic, you’re into Stage Two—disillusionment. Several people have told me they wish the affair had never happened; they wish they had worked on their marriage instead. Once they got into an affair, it was too compelling. But now that the affair has settled into a reality based relationship, it’s too late to go back to the marriage; they destroyed too much.

Q: Can all relationships be fixed after an affair?
Dr. G: No. What I look for is how the unfaithful partner shows empathy for the pain that they have caused when the betrayed spouse starts acting crazy.

Q: In what way do they act crazy?
Dr. G. They’re very emotional. They cry easily, their emotions flip-flop. They are hyper-vigilant. They want to look at the beeper. They have flashbacks. In the car they hear a country-western song and start crying, or accusing. They obsess over the details of the affair. Although these are common post-traumatic reactions to infidelity, their behavior is very erratic and upsetting to them and their partner. How much compassion the partner has for that is one of the benchmarks.

Another sign of salvageability lies in how much responsibility the unfaithful partner is willing to take for the choice they made, regardless of problems that pre-existed in the marriage. (We definitely need to work on the weaknesses of the marriage, but not to justify the affair.) If the unfaithful partner says, “you made me do it,” that’s not as predictive of a good outcome as when the partner says, “we should have gone to counseling before this happened to deal with the problems.” Sometimes the unfaithful partner really doesn’t regret the affair, because it was very exciting. One of the big strains between the partners in the primary relationship is the way they perceive the affair partner.

Q: How so?
Dr. G: A lot of the anger and the rage the betrayed spouse feels is directed toward the affair partner rather than the marital partner: “that person doesn’t have any morals;” “that person was exploitative.” “That person’s a home wrecker.” To believe that of the marital partner would make it difficult to stay in the relationship.

At the same time, the person who had the affair may still be idealizing the affair partner. The unfaithful spouse perceives the affair partner as an angel, whereas the betrayed person perceives an evil person. It’s important at some point in the healing process for the involved person to see some flaws in the affair partner, so that they can partly see what their partner, the betrayed spouse, is telling them. But it’s also important for the betrayed spouse to see the affair partner not as a cardboard character but as a human being.

Q: Is there anything else that helps you gauge the salvagability of a relationship after an affair?
Dr. G: Empathy, responsibility—and the degree of understanding of the vulnerabilities that made an affair possible.

Q: What vulnerabilities?
Dr. G: There are individual vulnerabilities, such as curiosity. Somebody gets invited for lunch, and they go to the house because they’re curious. They must learn that getting curious is a danger sign. Or they learn that if some damsel or guy in distress comes with a sad story, instead of becoming their confessor and their confidante, they give out the name of a great therapist. Knowing what these vulnerabilities are, and understanding them, allows a person to avoid them.

Q: Are there relationship vulnerabilities?
Dr. G: The biggest one I see these days is the child-centered marriage. I tell couples that if you really love your kids, the best gift you can give them is your own happy marriage. You can’t have a happy marriage if you never spend time alone. Your children need to see you going out together without them, or closing the bedroom door. That gives them a sense of security greater than they get by just by being loved. Today’s parents feel guilty because they don’t have enough time with their kids. They think they’re making it up to them by spending with them whatever leisure time they do have. They have family activities and family vacations. To help them rebuild the marriage I help them become more couple-centered, by building a cocoon around themselves as a couple.

Q: Is it hard to get over an affair without a therapist?
Dr. G: It’s hard to do with a therapist. People can get over it, but I don’t know that they resolve the issues. Usually the unfaithful person wants to let it rest at “Hi hon, I’m back. Let’s get on with our lives. Why do we have to keep going back over the past?” The betrayed person wants to know the story with all the gory details. They may begin to feel they’re wrong to keep asking, and so may suppress their need to know because their partner doesn’t want to talk about it. They may stay together, but they really don’t learn anything and they don’t heal.

Q. Can it ever be the same as it was before the affair?
Dr.G: The affair creates a loss of innocence and some scar tissue. I tell couples things will never be the same. But the relationship may be stronger than it was before. If you break something and glue it back together with Super-Glue, it could be stronger than before—although you can see the cracks when you look closely.

Q: How do you rebuild trust?
Dr. G: Through honesty. First I have to build safety. It comes about by stopping all contact with the affair partner and sharing your whereabouts, by being willing to answer the questions from your partner, by handing over the beeper, even by creating a fund to hire a detective from time to time to check up at random.

It also requires sharing information about any encounters with the affair partner before being asked; when you come home, you say, I saw him today, and he asked me how we’re doing, and I said I really don’t want to discuss that with you. That’s counter-intuitive. People think that talking about it with the spouse will create upset, and they’ll have to go through the whole thing again. But it doesn’t. Instead of trying to put the affair in a vault and lock it up, if they’re willing to take it out and look at it, then the trust is rebuilt through that intimacy. The betrayed spouse may say, “I remember when such-and-such happened.” If the unfaithful spouse can say, “yeah, I just recalled such-and-such,” and they bring up things, or ask their partner, “how are you feeling? I see you’re looking down today, is that because you’re remembering?” trust can be rebuilt.

[Marriage Missions Editors Note: To read an article that answers the question, "What do you do when your unfaithful spouse won’t answer your questions?" written by author Anne Bercht, please click HERE]

Q: Eventually the questioning and revealing assume a more normal level in the relationship?
Dr. G: Yes, but things will often pop up. Someone or something will prompt them to remember something that was said. What did you mean when you said that? Or, what were you doing when that happened? In the beginning, the betrayed partner wants details. Where, what, when. Did you tell them you love them? Did you give them gifts? Did they give you gifts? How often did you see them? How many times did you have sex? Where did you have sex, was it in our house? Was it in the car? How much money did you spend. Those kinds of factual questions need to be answered. Eventually the questions develop more complexity. How did it go on so long if you knew that it was wrong? After that first time, did you feel guilty? At that point they’re in the final stages of trauma recovery, which is the search for meaning.

Q: And they have come to a joint understanding about what the affair meant?
Dr. G: By combining their stories and their perceptions. A couple builds trust by rewriting their history and including the story of the affair. Some couples do a beautiful job in trying to understand the affair together, and they co-create the story of what they’ve been through together.

Q. What is happening in those relationships that are not equal?
Dr. G: Sometimes there’s an over-functioning spouse and an under-functioning spouse. One partner takes on a lot of responsibility—and then resents it. The more a person puts energy into something and tries to work on it, the more committed to the relationship that person is. The other partner, who is only semi-involved in the relationship, is freer to get involved in an affair, because they’re not as connected to the marriage. This is interesting because the popular notion is that the person who has the affair wasn’t getting enough at home. The reality is that they weren’t giving enough at home.

Q. How do you handle that?
Dr.G: In rebuilding that relationship, more equity has to be created. The issue isn’t what can the betrayed spouse do to make the partner happy—it’s what can the unfaithful spouse do to make their partner happy. In research and in practice, my colleague Tom Wright, Ph.D., and I have observed that when you compare who does more, who is more understanding, who is more romantic, who enjoys sex more—the affair is almost always more equitable than the marriage. Usually, the person was giving more—more time, more attention, more compliments—in the affair than in the marriage. If they can come back and invest in the marriage what they were doing in the affair, then they’ll feel more. There’s research showing that people are more satisfied in equitable relationships.

Q: You use the metaphor of walls and windows in talking about affairs.
Dr. G: There’s almost always a wall of secrecy around the affair; the primary partner doesn’t know what’s going on on the other side of that wall. In the affair, there is often a window into the marriage, like a one-way mirror. To reconstruct the marriage, you have to reverse the walls and windows, put up a wall with the affair partner, and put up a window inside the marriage.

Answering a spouse’s questions about what happened in the affair is a way to reverse the process. It’s a matter of who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside? Sometimes people will open windows but not put up walls. Sometimes they put up walls but don’t open the windows. Unless you do both, you can not rebuild safety and trust in the marriage.

The above interview is just a portion of what was contained in the magazine interview Dr. Shirley Glass did with Psychology Today (July/August 1998). To read it in it’s entirety and to view more magazine and newspaper articles plus other information on this subject you can go to her web site at www.shirleyglass.com.

Please note that this is a secular web site that you’d be going to. We’ve personally found no quarrel with any of the material we’ve read of hers and have greatly appreciated her wisdom in this area of marriage. But we haven’t read everything she has posted so we want to caution you to read it prayerfully and carefully asking for God to give you discernment and spiritual guidance.

However, it’s important to know that, no matter bleak things might seem, it’s possible to revitalize a marriage wounded by infidelity. It’s not easy— there are no quick-fix, one-size-fits-all solutions— but years of experience has taught me that there are definite patterns to what people in loving relationships do to bring their marriages back from the brink of disaster.

Healing from infidelity involves teamwork; both spouses must be fully committed to the hard work of getting their marriages back on track. The unfaithful partner must be willing to end the affair and do whatever it takes to win back the trust of his or her spouse.

The betrayed spouse must be willing to find ways to manage overwhelming emotions so, as a couple, they can begin to sort out how the affair happened,and more importantly, what needs to change so that it never happens again. Although no two people, marriages or paths to recovery are identical, it’s helpful to know that healing typically happens in stages.

If you recently discovered that your spouse has been unfaithful, you will undoubtedly feel a whole range of emotions—shock, rage, hurt, devastation, disillusionment, and intense sadness. You may have difficulty sleeping or eating, or feel completely obsessed with the affair. If you’re an emotional person, you may cry a lot. You may want to be alone, or conversely, feel at your worst when you are.

While unpleasant, these reactions are perfectly normal. Although you might be telling yourself that your marriage will never improve, it will, but not immediately. Healing from infidelity takes a long time. Just when you think things are looking up, something reminds you of the affair and you go downhill rapidly. It’s easy to feel discouraged unless you both keep in mind that intense ups and downs are the norm. Eventually, the setbacks will be fewer and far between.

Although some people are more curious than others, it’s very common to have lots of questions about the affair, especially initially. If you have little interest in the facts, so be it. However, if you need to know what happened, ask. Although the details may be uncomfortable to hear, just knowing your spouse is willing to “come clean” helps people recover. As the unfaithful spouse, you might feel tremendous remorse and guilt, and prefer avoiding the details entirely, but experience shows that this is a formula for disaster. Sweeping negative feelings and lingering questions under the carpet makes genuine healing unlikely.

Once there is closure on what actually happened there is typically a need to know why it happened. Betrayed spouses often believe that unless they get to the bottom of things, it could happen again.

Unfortunately, since the reasons people stray can be quite complex, the whys aren’t always crystal clear. No one forces anyone to be unfaithful. Infidelity is a decision, even if doesn’t feel that way. If you were unfaithful, it’s important to examine why you allowed yourself to do something that could threaten your marriage. Were you satisfying a need to feel attractive? Are you having a mid-life crisis? Did you grow up in a family where infidelity was a way of life? Do you have a sexual addiction?

It’s equally important to explore whether your marriage is significantly lacking. Although no marriage is perfect, sometimes people feel so unhappy, they look to others for a stronger emotional or physical connection. They complain of feeling taken for granted, unloved, resentful, or ignored. Sometimes there is a lack of intimacy or sexuality in the marriage.

If unhappiness with your spouse contributed to your decision to have an affair, you need to address your feelings openly and honestly so that together you can make some changes. If open communication is a problem, consider seeking help from a qualified marital therapist or taking a communication skill-building class. There are many available through religious organizations, community colleges and mental health settings.

Another necessary ingredient for rebuilding a marriage involves the willingness of unfaithful spouses to demonstrate sincere regret and remorse. You can’t apologize often enough. You need to tell your spouse that you’ll never commit adultery again. Although, since you’re working diligently to repair your relationship, you might think your intentions to be monogamous are obvious, they aren’t.

Tell your spouse of your plans to take your commitment to your marriage to heart. This will be particularly important during the early stages of recovery when mistrust is rampant.

Conversely, talking about the affair can’t be the only thing you do. Couples who successfully rebuild their marriages recognize the importance of both talking about their difficulties and spending time together without discussing painful topics. They intentionally create opportunities to reconnect and their nurture their friendship.

They take walks, go out to eat or to a movie, develop new mutual interests and so on. Betrayed spouses will be more interested in spending discussion-free time after the initial shock of the affair has dissipated.

Ultimately, the key to healing from infidelity involves forgiveness, which is frequently the last step in the healing process. The unfaithful spouse can do everything right — be forthcoming, express remorse, listen lovingly and act trustworthy, and still, the marriage won’t mend unless the betrayed person forgives his or her spouse and the unfaithful spouse forgives him or herself.

Forgiveness opens the door to real intimacy and connection. But forgiveness doesn’t just happen. It’s a conscious decision to stop blaming, make peace, and start tomorrow with a clean slate. If the past has had you in its clutches, why not take the next step to having more love in your life? Decide to forgive today.

The above article, written by Michele Weiner-Davis, was featured in Parade magazine, March 18, 2001

The question I am most frequently asked is “how can I survive my spouse’s affair?” After having counseled thousands of couples with hundreds of marital conflicts, I am completely convinced that a spouse’s unfaithfulness is the most painful experience that can be inflicted in marriage. Those I’ve counseled who have had the tragic misfortune of having experienced rape, physical abuse, sexual abuse of their children, and infidelity have consistently reported to me that their spouse’s unfaithfulness was their very worst experience. To be convinced of the devastating impact of infidelity, you only need to go through it once.

And yet, more than 50% of all spouses are victims of infidelity, which means that one spouse in most marriages will suffer the greatest marital pain possible at some time during their lifetimes. It’s no wonder that I receive so many letters from these victims of unfaithfulness.

COPING WITH INFIDELITY, Part 1: How Do Affairs Begin? Affairs usually begin with an attraction to someone you know fairly well, someone you spend time with each week — your friends or co-workers. To illustrate how affairs develop, I post letters from two women, one who is tempted to have an affair with her husband’s best friend, and another whose best friend had an affair with her husband.

COPING WITH INFIDELITY, Part 2: How Should Affairs End? There are three parts to the way affairs should end. The first part is revealing the affair to one’s spouse, the second part is never seeing or communicating with the lover again, and the third part is getting through the symptoms of withdrawal after a permanent separation takes place. I post two letters to illustrate these three parts to how an affair should end.

COPING WITH INFIDELITY, Part 3: Restoring the Marital Relationship: Since an affair does not usually end the way it should, with complete separation from the lover, you may not find this column entirely relevant to you. In your case, your spouse’s lover may still be a factor, and you will want to know how to restore your marital relationship with your spouse’s lover standing in the wings. If you are in that position, I have addressed that topic in two other columns that I review below: “What to Do with an Unfaithful Husband” and “What to Do with an Unfaithful Wife.” In short, it’s hard enough to restore a martial relationship when a lover is finally out of the picture. But it’s impossible when the lover is still hanging around.

COPING WITH INFIDELITY, Part 4: Overcoming Resentment: You might think that after a husband and wife rebuild their love for each other after an affair, all would be forgiven. Well, all might be forgiven, but all is not forgotten. In fact, many couples find that the memory of the affair haunts them decades after it happened. I post three letters to illustrate what a problem resentment is for many people, and I explain how to handle it so that it doesn’t ruin a successful recovery.

FOUR RULES TO GUIDE MARITAL RECOVERY AFTER AN AFFAIR: After the lover is finally gone and you are ready to restore love to your marriage, where should you begin? This column explains the rules I suggest for couples recovering from an affair. Technically, they are the very rules that I recommend in any marriage, because they guarantee mutual love when they are followed.

WHAT TO DO WITH AN UNFAITHFUL HUSBAND: Altogether, this column contains five letters and my responses to them, written by women who have recently discovered their husband’s unfaithfulness. There is some redundancy in the questions and answers, but if you have suffered from your husband’s infidelity, you will want to gain from the experience of as many other people as possible.

WHAT TO DO WITH AN UNFAITHFUL WIFE: As with the unfaithful husband column, five letters from husbands, and my responses to them, are posted.

ESCAPING THE JAWS OF INFIDELITY: How to Avoid An Affair: There are many of you who are having an affair, but want to know how to get out of it in one piece. And then there are even more of you who want to know how to avoid it in the first place. In this column I post letters from two women who are having affairs and want out of the mess they’ve created. I also address the issue of avoiding the mess in the first place by protecting your spouse from your unfaithful predisposition. We all have it, you know — a predisposition to be unfaithful. Given certain conditions, we can all have affairs, destroying the happiness of our spouse, our children, our extended families, our lover, and ourselves. Those conditions should be avoided at all costs, don’t you think?

THE LOVER’S PERSPECTIVE ON INFIDELITY: The spouses of those who have affairs are not the only victims of infidelity. The lovers can also be victims. This column addresses the anguish experienced by women who present the lover’s perspective.

HOW CAN I RECOVER MY SEXUAL DESIRE FOR MY HUSBAND AFTER MY AFFAIR? A column somewhat related to the lover’s perspective, this column treats the issue of sexual recovery for the one who had the affair, but now wants to restore passion to her marriage.

INFIDELITY ON THE INTERNET: I receive an alarming number of letters each week by those whose spouses have fallen in love with someone on the internet. This form of infidelity is particularly common among those who have become addicted to internet communication. You know who you are. If your spouse wants you to leave the computer and come to bed, and you say, “just a minute,” you’re one of them.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU (or Your Spouse) BECOMES PREGNANT WITH A LOVER’S CHILD: Infidelity has tragic consequences. Not only does unfaithfulness itself cause untold emotional suffering for a victimized spouse, but affairs create a host of other problems, too. One example of these problems is venereal disease — when an unfaithful spouse is infected, which is often the case, the disease is usually passed on to the unsuspecting marriage partner. Another example is the topic of this Q&A column— pregnancy with a lover’s child. This column considers the choices these women face, and what I recommend. Their husbands also have hard choices to make, and my advice is for them, too.

During the initial stages one seems to be literally teetering between life and death. This is not just a bad day or something you will ‘just get over.’ It is worse than death. It is living through your worst nightmare.

To read more of this article, click onto the following web site link:

• TEN STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVING INFIDELITY

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It feels as though what we’re doing is making it worse. In the chapter on talking (chapter 7), we’ll discuss more specific principles and tools. However, here we’d like to address two of the most common unhealthy attempts to end the pain.

First is the infidel’s desire to spare the spouse more pain. A common example of this occurs when the infidel accidentally sees a former partner or is actually contacted by a former partner. The infidel withholds this information from the spouse, knowing it will hurt the spouse and precipitate another long episode of grief.

Unfortunately, we have seen what happens when the information comes out later—and rest assured it will. The spouse feels he or she has once again been deceived, and has great difficulty believing the infidel didn’t initiate the contact or respond inappropriately to the contact. The healing process in the marriage is set back significantly.

It is so much easier to deal with truth. And when truth is handled correctly, the infidel has some control over how the spouse is exposed to it.

Acknowledging a contact will indeed bring questions. Don’t sidestep them. Be bold. Many episodes of adultery happen within the workplace, so unless the infidel or the partner has changed jobs, contacts will inevitably occur. It is best if your spouse hears this information from you. And if your spouse asks how the contact made you feel, be honest.

Most spouses are not opting to stay with infidels who are devoid of emotions; therefore, an answer that denies emotions feels like a lie—again. A simple “I felt sad,” “I was very uncomfortable,” or “I felt guilty for just being there” followed by an affirmation that this marriage is where the infidel will be putting energy and effort reaffirms the commitment to the spouse.

The point is that one of the biggest hurts experienced by the spouse is the deception. Anything that even remotely resembles deception causes more pain. And we have heard countless times from many, many spouses that they can perceive when truth is being withheld. They may not be able to articulate what truth, and they may not be able to discern what is or is not going on, but they know something is up.

The second common dynamic we have seen is the attempt to short-circuit the healing process, thus escaping the pain. For example, let’s say it’s evening. Things feel almost normal at home for a change, and then the spouse brings “it” up again. More questions. You want to avoid what you know will occur if this conversation takes place, so you sabotage it using anger, avoidance, or anything that will create a diversion. The message to the one who wants to talk is to “get over it and move on with life.”

This is common to the infidel, but we have also seen it with the spouse. Some spouses are more than willing to avoid any conflict. It seems they are more afraid of the truth than of the illusion of healing. Again, you may feel better momentarily, but your relief will be short lived, and healing will not be accomplished.

Avoiding the pain circumvents healing. Enduring the pain facilitates healing. If what you want is a healthy marriage, you must endure the pain. The good news is that God has promised to see us through the pain and to bring us out on the other side.

What we appreciate about this book is how totally honest they are in their writings and how transparent they allow themselves to become as they diary the gut-wrenching struggle— each giving their own perspective during the healing process. This book is a great roadmap to follow to recovery! We wish every couple that goes through this terrible experience could read this book because it’s packed with so much that could help them.

We wish we could include everything the authors wrote on the subject of the above article. Obviously, there’s more written in this book that will help you to address how to work on the marriage in healthy ways, because the authors even refer to it, but to respect the authors copyright privilege, it’s just not possible to do that. We chose to feature the UN-healthy ways couples try to heal their pain (rather than the healthy ones) because we hear of this SO much from couples who write us. We wanted to bust the myth that this is the best way to deal with the painful process involved in healing your relationship. We REALLY recommend that you get the book because we think it can help every person who has been involved in infidelity. This is a GREAT book!

The authors Gary and Mona can be reached at www.hopeandhealing.us.

“Impact! Dead on impact. Maybe I have confused separateness with the feeling of being dead. The tears fall like rain drops.”

“The pain is physically exhausting but I am still here.”

“Lord I give up. I am not even going to pretend to be brave because I am actually totally broken. I give up. I don’t want this anymore. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t Lord. I can’t Lord. I can’t Lord. My heart is completely shattered.”

These are the feelings of sadness expressed by those who have been betrayed. It is the feeling of death, except one is still alive and must continue to live. But how? When will it ever go away? Will I ever feel happy again? It seems impossible. And my family tells me to just ‘get over it!’ That hurts me even more. My friends don’t understand.

When I discovered my husband’s affair, I felt as if I had gained a new companion, a companion whom I didn’t want, who wasn’t welcome, who had not been invited and who would not go away.

That companion was pain. For me it was 2 ½ years until I felt happiness again, and I distinctly remember feeling it again, and I remember why.

The feeling of sadness for me was caused by thinking that I was unloved, perhaps even unlovable. Surely if I was a lovable person, the one I loved the most would not have hurt me so deeply with betrayal, abandonment, deceit and lies. The problem was that what I believed about myself, about my life and about the people around me was untrue. The truth is that I am lovable and therefore I will always have lots of love in my life.

I wanted a guarantee. I wanted to be guaranteed that I would never be betrayed by my husband again. He gave me his guarantee, yet I still didn’t feel guaranteed. After all, had I not been given a guarantee the day we exchanged our wedding vows? I thought what I needed was to throw away the old and start over with the new.

“Yes, that’s what I needed,” I thought to myself, “a new relationship with my very own husband of 18 years.” Yes, we should redo our wedding vows. Yet others have redone their wedding vows and been betrayed again! Wedding vows are no guarantee.

Then I realized that I can never be guaranteed what all of the future choices of another individual will be. Neither can anyone else on the planet be guaranteed that their spouse will never have an affair. There are no such guarantees in life. I wish it were different, but that is reality. One thing no person can take away from another is their own right to choose. And really…would we want to?

How loved would I feel if another was forced to love me?

Prior to our meeting this week, I put out an email to the Beyond Affairs Network asking other coordinators, how they got past the sadness. Here are their responses which I shared at our meeting:

“It was the hardest of emotions for me to overcome, but I finally accepted the fact that it happened and that I had no control over the actions of my spouse. I continually reminded myself that unless I controlled my own actions, I would be bound by my own stubbornness to remain in the anger and resentment stage. The constant dwelling on what happened is what keeps people stuck there. Again I had to control my own thoughts and move ahead. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it can be done especially if you choose to stay focused.”

Another wrote:

“I think, hard as it is to accept, that ‘tincture of time’ is the best way to get past both the hurt and the anger. I also know that it is possible to get stuck in either place. So what I did, instead of trying to rush the process, was to really LET myself be sad and then to LET myself be angry for a while. I had spent so much time and energy trying to move on, that I found I was denying myself the right to feel what I NEEDED to feel in order to heal.

Once I acknowledged my feelings and that I wasn’t crazy for feeling them, it was much easier to let them go. Now when negative feelings come, I can acknowledge them and put them away much faster. But it doesn’t happen overnight. It has been nearly 3 years for me and I’m finally getting there.”

Another affair survivor wrote: “For me, the greatest skill for dealing with sadness is gratitude. Define it. Practice it. It seems trite to say count your blessings when you’re in the midst of such pain, but there is no denying the practical benefits of just doing. It’s scriptural and I think it’s psychologically sound. This is NOT denial. It’s perspective and coping until time has had the chance to work its magic.”

Then I read Peggy Vaughan’s article “Moving from Pain to Recovery“, where she talks about the importance of controlling your thoughts. What we feed grows. If we allow ourselves to replay the pain over and over again in our minds, we don’t move forward, in fact, it can get worse with time, if time is spent nursing and rehearsing the wound over and over again. This is where it becomes so important in the healing process to educate ourselves and to share with others who understand, which is the purpose of Beyond Affairs, constructive ideas and efforts to get beyond the painful emotions.

One woman shared how taking anti depressants (only for 6 months) had helped her to cope with life at somewhat of a normal level during the initial discovery period. Others managed their pain, and often depression that accompanies discovering marital infidelity, through cognitive therapy (which is learning to understand, recognize and control your thoughts).

During our meeting, one individual brought to our attention the value of a good comedy!!! What a great, but often overlooked point! Sometimes you’ve just been dealing with the darn stuff too long.

You need to go out and have a good laugh. Give all those serious, deep thinking, tragedy moments a rest. Search for things that make you laugh. A good laugh is medicine for the soul.

Getting past the sadness, it’s a choice. We choose whether we will read books, educate ourselves, increase our understanding, learn from others and most of all whether or not WE will control our thoughts. Can you get past the sadness? Absolutely! But it takes time and it is YOUR choice.

The above article titled, “How Can I Get Past the Sadness?” was written b y Anne Bercht and is featured on the web site for PassionateLife Seminars, which is a dedicated to helping others survive marriage affairs, infidelity, adultery and betrayal. Anne’s book, My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me is an inspiring true story of one family’s courage and recovery after a devastating affair.

This particular article is one of many they have posted on the subject of surviving infidelity and healthy recovery from extra marital affairs. You may want to visit their web site to see what else they offer which might further help you in some way with this issue. You can visit their web site by going to www.passionatelife.ca.

This article, written in a question and answer format, is not intended for those “who have recently discovered their spouse’s extramarital affair. But rather it is written for those who have been on a healing journey for a significant period of time, who desire to stay married, and whose spouses have done their part in taking responsibility for their affair and doing the work necessary to heal the marriage.”

Sometimes we try to skip necessary steps in healing such devastation. Please know that it almost always takes years to heal from this type of betrayal (there are exceptions to most anything, although it would be rare if this would be one of them). Even if all the “conditions” are right, this is so. Please do all you can to allow yourself the time and make the effort to heal as you should.

With this in mind, for those that are ready, the following article is found on the web site for the Beyond Affairs Network, which is directed by Anne and Brian Bercht. Please click onto the link provided below to read this article:

• How Do You Cope if Your Spouse
Had Intense Feelings for Their Affair Partner

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If denied, that anger “goes underground” and eats away at the innermost spirit of the person. It is very important for the violated spouse to be free to express the rage that he or she feels.

After the first surge of anger comes the need for information —what happened? When did it happen? How often did it happen? And so on. This is the time for the violated spouse to ask the offender those all-important questions. Men seem to want to know the details of the sexual activity; women commonly report wanting to know if their husband loves the other person. Whatever the need, the information is important and shouldn’t be squelched.

There is no good reason to hide information from the injured spouse at this point. The precious marriage vow lies shattered on the floor —there is nothing left of the marriage to protect. Therefore, the infidel who has been discovered should share each and every bit of information that his partner wants to know.

Often the infidel thinks that as the questions come, he should tell only what he thinks is appropriate, so he withholds details, covering up certain aspects of the trail. Nothing will anger the wounded spouse more than being subtly deceived at this point by double talk or half-truths. Eventually, all truth will be known anyway.

This is the time to tell it all, or at least tell it at the level that the spouse wants to hear it. There’s a difference between the two. Many of my counselees who have gone through recovery from affairs say that getting into too much detail can create tortuous mental images for the injured spouse that can haunt her for years. But you need to walk this fine line of disclosure and honesty carefully, and be sure to err on the side of too much disclosure rather than too little.

The ideal, of course, would be to satisfy the spouse’s need to know without ignoring any major revelations. The main point is to own up to what you have done and to admit humbly the full range of injury and transgression. Don’t try to alter the facts subtly to protect yourself. Just as deceit is no way to build a relationship, it’s no way to rebuild a broken one.

Withheld information becomes “unfinished business” that will have to be dragged along through the balance of the marriage. The more time that passes without the unfinished business being revealed, the more difficult it will be to bring it up. Should the marriage stay together, this secret will become an albatross around the neck of the infidel, who will have wished that he or she had completely “come clean” at the anger stage, when it was the most appropriate and helpful.

The Spouse Now Holds the Reins
The power to continue the marriage has now passed into the hands of the wounded spouse. Her reaction-whether to process the affair is that if she expresses as much rage as she feels, she will drive her spouse into the arms of his partner. That could happen; but, remember, he has already been in his partner’s arms. You couldn’t keep him out of her arms before you knew about it; now simply being angry is not going to drive him to her-more is involved here than that!

Besides, there is nothing of the marriage left to protect by “walking on eggshells” at this point. If you are going to live together in harmony in the future, you need to live together differently. It’s time to start over. The most sacred aspects of this marriage have already been violated. Now you both have to begin to rebuild.

Grieving the Loss
During the anguish phase, some recovery can begin. But it won’t be steady progress —rather it will probably be two steps forward and one step back. It’s a rocky time emotionally, but that’s part of the normal process of grieving the losses: loss of trust, of the one-pure marital relationship, and so on.

Just about the time that the violated spouse thinks he/she is getting over the pain, it will suddenly resurface. But be encouraged; gradually the pain will become less intense and less frequent, and the good times between the down times will lengthen.

This grief process is similar to grieving the death of a spouse. Violated spouses do indeed report many responses that parallel those of widows:

• They feel abandoned by their mate.
• They feel alone in their grief.
• They feel as if they could have done something to prevent this.
• They feel like a marked person. They don’t fit in with normal couples anymore.
• They have a lot of unfinished business with their spouse that is now off-limits or has been overshadowed by what has occurred.
• They feel terrified of the future.
• They feel they should be doing better than they are for the time that they’ve been in it.
• They will even pretend nothing has happened (such as the widow who sets a plate for the lost partner at the dinner table).

Grieving is important, but it is even more important to know what you are grieving for. Some find it helpful to list the losses on paper. I recommend that you try that, being as transparent and honest as you can.

Crying in front of other people as you process your grief is perfectly permissible. Grief isn’t always predictable, not always controllable. It is certainly all right to cry in front of the infidel. In fact, he needs to see and feel the damage his actions have wrought. Be totally honest about your sadness.

Guarantees
One of the first things an angry and grieving spouse wants is the guarantee that this will never happen again. Often Christian spouses think that if they can just get their infidel partner to walk the aisle to the altar, confess his/her sin in front of the congregation, read his Bible daily, or be convicted by the Holy Spirit or disciplined by the church, all will be well. But nothing could be further from the truth. Any or all of those practices might be appropriate, but none of them will provide the guarantee that the wounded spouse is looking for.

The closest thing to a guarantee that the infidel won’t stray again is for him to feel fully the pain that he has caused the wounded spouse. Let me underline this point: promises to “behave” won’t endure; neither will artificial boundaries such as a curfew each night after work.

The only lasting remedy is for the infidel to feel the agony he has caused his spouse. If he truly loves his mate (and he usually does down deep; that’s why they got married and why he came back), that will hurt him so much that he won’t want to inflict more on his loved one. But getting the infidel to experience the hurt of the spouse won’t happen immediately —it could take many months. Remember it will take as long to recover from the affair as it did for the infidelity partner to get involved in it. So allow some time for him to feel her pain.

The above article comes from the book, TORN ASUNDER – Recovery from Extramarital Affairs -By Dave Carder, Moody Publishers, www.moodypublishers.com. This book is very comprehensive and is a great practical guide for dealing with extramarital affairs. It’s very comprehensive because it carefully sorts out the different kinds of affairs and deals with each kind —giving very practical and insightful information. It doesn’t lump all infidelity together “giving over-simplistic spiritual answers.” It’s practical because “it deals with daily, gut-level issues both partners face.” We highly recommend getting this book!

There are a couple of parts that especially stand out and set it apart from other resources. One in particular which is EXCELLENT is titled: “When Your Spouse Doesn’t Want You Back: The 90-Day Experiment.” We wish we could have put this portion of the book on our web site but it’s too long to be able to honor the author’s copyright privilege and it really can’t be shortened to do it justice. You really need to get the book to have this as well as the other helpful information. (If you’re dealing with this problem and you can’t get this book in your country then please contact the publisher at the above web site and see if there’s something that can be arranged.)

They also have a section in it which includes a questionnaire that addresses: “Are You at Risk for an Affair?” It’s an excellent tool to identify personal growth areas for you and your spouse to discuss and develop and is designed to help evaluate personal history and lifestyle which parallels with those who have been involved in adultery. We were surprised by some of the questions and what can set people up to have an affair. It might help you too. This book is filled with many other great insights also!

If more people realized that this can happen to almost anyone, perhaps there would be fewer betrayals and divorces, she says. “I’m not saying that a bad marriage won’t make you vulnerable [to an affair],” she says. “I’m saying that’s not the only thing that can make you vulnerable. A lot of people who see themselves as loving and devoted can find themselves in this dilemma.”

Glass should know. She’s treated hundreds of unfaithful spouses and has researched the subject for nearly three decades. Her conclusions? That many affairs could be prevented if couples understood these risks and that the affairs that do occur can be overcome — albeit through a sometimes painful but ultimately therapeutic process of talking through what happened.

“It’s not the sex, it’s the deception that destroys a marriage,” says Glass, 67. “How can you trust anyone again who has looked into your eyes and lied to you?”

In her book, NOT “Just Friends” (The Free Press), Glass outlines her findings and explores the hows and whys of affairs. It’s a complex subject. And she thinks it’s an evolving behavior— with more affairs starting with emotional, rather than sexual, relationships.

Studies suggest that 44 percent of husbands and 25 percent of wives have had sexual relations outside marriage, she notes. It’s not confined to a “particular class, occupation or age,” Glass writes. “Infidelity can occur in any household, not just in situations where partners are promiscuous or rich and powerful. No marriage is immune.”

Myths and reality
Glass says she is frustrated by the many myths that are perpetuated about affairs. Among them: that cheating partners usually leave clues, that a person who’s having an affair will lose interest in spousal sex, that a straying partner will find fault in his or her spouse. The reality, she says, is that most affairs are never detected, that married sex will often get better during an outside affair and that unfaithful spouses will sometimes act quite devoted at home (if only to cover their outside behavior).

“The people I see [after an affair] say they wish they could go back 5 years before it happened,” she says. “They didn’t think about the consequences. They act like teen-agers, romantically swept away.”

The workplace has become the prime launching pad for modern infidelity, according to Glass, with studies showing that 62 percent of straying men and 46 percent of women found their extramarital partners there. She notes that two decades ago, fewer affairs started at work because fewer women were there (particularly women acting as peers)— a point that hasn’t exactly endeared her to feminists.

“Today’s workplace is the most fertile breeding ground for affairs,” she writes. “The observed increase in women’s infidelity is because more women are in the workplace and more women are in professions that were previously dominated by men.”

Fellow therapists say Glass’ findings are important because few psychologists have studied the field as exhaustively as Glass, a one-time Baltimore City school psychologist who began studying infidelity while studying at Catholic University in the 1970s. She found it the ideal topic for a dissertation — relatively little-studied by academia to that point.

“If you don’t get good information about what to do [after an affair], it can be very difficult to put a marriage back together,” says Diane Sollee, a longtime Washington, D.C. —based marriage educator and director of SmartMarriages.com. “People think if you have a good marriage and you bake cherry pies and do everything right; your marriage will work out. It’s just not the way it is.”

Pat Love, a fellow therapist and author, says she agrees with Glass that affairs cause marriages to turn bad more often than bad marriages cause affairs. “If you meet enough people, you’ll eventually find someone with whom you have chemistry,” says Love, who is based in Austin, Texas. “Having an affair doesn’t mean you don’t love your partner.”

Radical healing
Glass believes the best way to heal a marriage post-affair is to have a full accounting of what happened. The spouse who’s been betrayed has a right to know the specifics, she says, down to how they met, what they talked about, where they went and even details of sexual encounters. Such close examination not only de-romanticizes the infidelity (it can no longer be a private secret), it helps re-establish intimacy in a marriage, Glass says.

It’s a controversial approach and can be extraordinarily painful for both partners in the marriage. Studies show that about one third of marriages don’t survive an affair. But if a couple is committed to keeping their union intact and commits to this process, it can emerge “stronger than if there’d never been an affair,” she says.

Dr. Eileen Mager, a Pikesville psychologist and longtime colleague, says failure to explore the “nitty-gritty” of an affair can haunt a relationship. “More traditional therapists may disagree, but it’s really essential for the partner’s healing and putting the affair behind,” Mager says. “We gauge this based on what the betrayed spouse needs to know. Sometimes, they need to know little. It’s a customized thing.”

Glass says that despite so many years of dealing with infidelity, she can still empathize with couples who have their marriage torn apart by affairs. Only occasionally, she says, does she meet betrayers so narcissistic that they feel no regret. “Seeing so many cases, it has made me a bit more cynical, I suppose,” she says. “Certainly, I’ve been deceived by clients, too. My sleaze detector doesn’t always go off.”

Glass has some first-hand experience with marriage. She and her husband Barry, 70, a retired accountant and business consultant, have been married 47 years. They have raised two daughters, Randi, 46, a San Francisco literary agent, and Karen, 41, an executive for Disney, and a son, Ira, the 44-year-old host and producer of the critically acclaimed This American Life program on public radio.

Glass says it may sound zealous but the best way to insulate a marriage against infidelity is to maintain some boundaries with members of the opposite sex. That means it can be all right to have friendships, but highly personal subjects should be off-limits. “People very seldom expect it to happen to them,” she says. “They don’t expect to ever be in that position, but when they are, it’s a catastrophe.”

The above article, titled, “Staying in a Marriage Rocked by Straying” written by Peter Jensen, was first featured in the newspaper The Baltimore Sun on August 10, 2003.

Answer: I am so very, very sorry for the pain you are experiencing. Your conflicting emotions are totally normal and to be expected.

The biggest thing you need to know is that there is a difference between forgiving someone and trusting him again. They are not the same. When we forgive, we release the other person from our desire to exact revenge on them for hurting us. We let go of their sin against us into God’s hands so that He can deal with them. But broken trust is another matter; it needs to be earned back, and that takes time-a good amount of time, consisting of one faithful, responsible, caring choice after another.

In order to understand God’s allowance for divorce, consider what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 19:8-“Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.” The Lord allows for divorce as a matter of love and grace for the one being hurt by a hard-hearted spouse. In the case of infidelity, when a spouse is repentant and truly wants to mend the marriage, God’s desire is that He glorifies Himself in the marriage by demonstrating His power and grace in the relationship.

There are many spouses who will attest to the fact that there is indeed trust after betrayal if the unfaithful one truly repents and commits to faithfulness. But it takes time, like I said. Probably close to a year minimum.

I disagree with the 30-day ultimatum. I see nothing in the Bible that says that. I do agree that if you choose to stay in the marriage it would depend on whether your husband shows remorse, demonstrates repentance, seeks accountability and is willing for his whereabouts to be checked on at all times. People who are hiding nothing have nothing to fear from accountability.

Here is a link to the Midlife Dimensions website, which offers help and resources for dealing with an affair: www.midlife.com/html/resources/articles/category_affairs.htm. I am concerned that you two are not plugged into a church home and therefore do not have any support system. This is going to make recovery unnecessarily difficult.

I would hope that one way your husband could show you he’s serious about mending your marriage is to find a church home and get connected to other people who will help support your marriage. God never intended for us to be “Lone Ranger Christians.” His intent is for us to be knitted into the body of Christ for support and as a way to receive His various kinds of grace.

You are cheating yourself and yourselves to not be connected to an important source of life and strength. I want to strongly suggest that you make this a priority.

I hope you find this helpful.

Sue Bohlin

P.S. You might also poke around the New Life website (www.newlife.com) and educate yourself on sex addiction. If it were me, I would want to know what drove my husband to a prostitute. I would also want to know if my actions played any part in it. (For example, this is one reason the apostle Paul tells married people not to deprive each other sexually.) It sounds like you have an opportunity to each look at your own “stuff” and see what you can both do to build the marriage, as long as he’s serious about it.

© 2006 Probe Ministries

Sue Bohlin is an associate speaker with Probe Ministries. She attended the University of Illinois, and has been a Bible teacher and conference speaker for over 30 years. She serves as a Mentor Mom and speaker for MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers), and on the board and as a small group leader of Living Hope Ministries, a Christ-centered outreach to those dealing with unwanted homosexuality. She is also a professional calligrapher and the webmistress for Probe Ministries; but most importantly, she is the wife of Dr. Ray Bohlin and the mother of their two grown sons.

What is Probe?

Probe Ministries is a non-profit ministry whose mission is to assist the church in renewing the minds of believers with a Christian world view and to equip the church to engage the world for Christ. Probe fulfills this mission through our Mind Games conferences for youth and adults, our 3 1/2 minute daily radio program, and our extensive Web site at www.probe.org.

Further information about Probe’s materials and ministry may be obtained by contacting us at:

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-ALSO-

We’d like to direct you to an article that where the author, Amber Arlene tells her story of how she finally came to a place of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness after she found out her husband had been having sex with prostitutes. To read this web site article, please click onto the link provided below:

• COULD I EVER FORGIVE HIM?